Why a stuffy nose makes food taste flat
Your tongue detects five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. Most of the rest, like strawberry, coffee or basil, is aroma that rides from your mouth up to your nose as you chew. That's retronasal smell. Pinch your nose and a jelly bean is just sweet.
Chew, then breathe out
Chewing breaks food apart, and the warmth of your mouth frees aroma compounds. When you swallow and breathe out, they travel up behind your palate to your smell receptors. Slower bites give them more time.
Test yourself
Questions from the interactive lesson, with the answer and the why.
You have a stuffy cold and your chicken soup tastes flat. What is going on?
Aroma molecules can't reach your smell receptors. Aroma is blocked, so only the basic tastes reach you.
True or false: When you have a cold, your taste buds stop working, and that's why food seems bland.
False. Congestion blocks the smell route, but the tongue still senses the five basic tastes.
What went wrong? You have a heavy cold. You taste the soup, find it bland, and add extra salt.
A blocked nose removed the aroma, so the salt level was probably fine. Salt is sensed on the tongue, which still works, so extra salt overshoots.
Fill the blank: Aroma that travels from your mouth up to your nose as you chew is called ___ smell.
Aroma that travels from your mouth up to your nose as you chew is called retronasal smell. This is the route from the mouth up behind the palate.
You pinch your nose and eat three things. Which loses the most flavor?
A ripe strawberry. Its fruity character is aroma, which a pinched nose cuts off.
True or false: Aroma molecules can reach your smell receptors from inside your mouth as well as through your nostrils.
True. Aroma reaches receptors through the nostrils and through the back of the throat while you eat.